Two brigades were now in midstream on the Isle of Orleans and one on Point Lévis. Landing artillery and stores, intrenching both positions, and mounting siege-guns at the last-named one consumed the first few days of July. Wolfe's skill in erecting and firing batteries had been abundantly demonstrated at Louisburg; and though his head quarters were on the island, he went frequently to superintend the preparations for the bombardment of Quebec. On July 12th a rocket leaped into the sky from Wolfe's camp. It was the signal for the forty guns and mortars that had been mounted on Point Lévis to open on the city that Vaudreuil and his friends had fondly thought was out of range. The first few shots may have encouraged the delusion, as they fell short; but the gunners quickly got their distance, and then began that storm of shot and shell which rained upon the doomed city, with scarce a respite, for upward of eight weeks.
Houses, churches, and monasteries crashed and crumbled beneath the pitiless discharge. The great cathedral, where the memories and the trophies of a century's defiance of the accursed heretic had so thickly gathered, was gradually reduced to a skeleton of charred walls. The church of Notre Dame de la Victoire, erected in gratitude for the delivery of the city from the last and only previous attack upon it sixty years before, was one of the first buildings to suffer from the far more serious punishment of this one. Wolfe, though already suffering from more than his chronic ill-health, was ubiquitous and indefatigable; now behind Monckton's guns at Point Lévis, now with Townshend's batteries at Montmorency, now up the river, ranging with his glass those miles of forbidding cliffs which he may already have begun to think he should one day have to climb. Some of Saunders' ships were in the Basin, between Orleans and Quebec, and frequently engaged with Montcalm's floating batteries; while in the mean time the roar of artillery from a dozen different quarters filled the simmering July days, and lit the short summer nights with fiery shapes, and drew in fitful floods the roving thunder-clouds that at this season of the year in North America are apt to lurk behind the serenest sky.
Fighting at close quarters there was, too, in plenty, though of an outpost and backwoods kind. Bois Herbert, with his painted Canadians and Abernakis Indians, and Stark and young Rogers with their colonial rangers—Greek against Greek—scalped each other with a hereditary ferocity that English and French regulars knew nothing of. In bringing a fleet up to Quebec, British sailors had already performed one feat pronounced impossible by Canadian tradition. They now still further upset their enemies' calculations by running the gauntlet of the batteries of Quebec and placing the Sutherland, with several smaller ships, at some distance up the river. This cost Montcalm six hundred men, whom he had to send under Dumas to watch the squadron. But all this brought the end no nearer. Time was exceeding precious, and July was almost out. Necessary messages were continually passing under flags of truce, and superfluous notes of defiance sometimes accompanied them. "You may destroy the town," said De Ramezay to Wolfe, "but you will never get inside it." "I will take Quebec," replied the fiery stripling, "if I stay here till November."
Through the whole weary month of August little occurred that the exigencies of our space would justify recording. Montcalm considered himself safe, and he even allowed two thousand Canadians to leave for the harvest. Wolfe had a thousand men of his small force sick or wounded in hospital. Amherst, it was reported, had taken Ticonderoga, but there was little likelihood of his getting through to their assistance. Prideaux, in the Far West, as it then was, had captured Niagara. It was a great success, but it in no way helped Wolfe. It must not be supposed, however, that August had passed away in humdrum fashion. The guns had roared with tireless throats, and the lower town was a heap of ruins. Far away down both banks of the St. Lawrence the dogs of war had raged through seigniories and hamlets. Between the upper and the nether millstone of Wolfe's proclamations and Montcalm's vengeance, the wretched peasantry were in a sore plight. Raided through and through by the fierce guerillas of North American warfare, swept bare of grain and cattle for Wolfe's army, the fugitives from smoking farms and hamlets were glad to seek refuge in the English lines, where the soldiers generously shared with them their meagre rations. More than one expedition had been sent up the river. Admiral Holmes, with over twenty ships, was already above the town, and had driven the French vessels, which had originally taken refuge there, to discharge their crews and run up shallow tributaries.
Wolfe's intention now was to place every man that he could spare on board the ships in the upper river, and his entire force was reduced by death, wounds, and sickness to under seven thousand men. On September 3d, with slight annoyance from an ill-directed cannon fire, he removed the whole force at Montmorency across the water to the camps of Orleans or Point Lévis. On the following day all the troops at both these stations which were not necessary for their protection were paraded; for what purpose no one knew, least of all the French, who from their lofty lines could mark every movement in the wide panorama below, and were sorely puzzled and perturbed. Some great endeavor was in the wind, beyond a doubt; but both Wolfe and his faithful ally, the admiral, did their utmost to disguise its import. And for this very reason it would be futile, even if necessary, to follow the fluctuating manœuvres that for the next few days kept the enemy in constant agitation: the sudden rage of batteries here, the threatening demonstrations of troop-laden boats there, the constant and bewildering movement of armed ships at every point. It was well designed and industriously maintained, for the sole purpose of harassing the French and covering Wolfe's real intention.
On the night of September 4th the general was well enough to dine with Monckton's officers at Point Lévis, but the next day he was again prostrate with illness, to the great anxiety of his army. He implored the doctor to "patch him up sufficiently for the work in hand; after that nothing mattered." Chronic gravel and rheumatism, with a sharp low fever, aggravated by a mental strain of the severest kind, all preying on a sickly frame, were what the indomitable spirit there imprisoned had to wrestle with. On the 6th, however, Wolfe struggled up, and during that day and the next superintended the march of his picked column, numbering some four thousand men, up the south bank of the river. Fording, near waist-deep, the Etchemain River, they were received beyond its mouth by the boats of the fleet, and, as each detachment arrived, conveyed on board. The Forty-eighth, however, seven hundred strong, were left, under Colonel Burton, near Point Lévis to await orders.
The fleet, with Wolfe and some thirty-six hundred men on board, now moved up to Cap Rouge, behind which, at the first dip in the high barrier of cliffs, was Bougainville with fifteen hundred men (soon afterward increased), exclusive of three hundred serviceable light cavalry. The cove here was intrenched, and the French commander was so harried with feigned attacks that he and his people had no rest. At the same time, so well was the universal activity maintained that Montcalm, eight miles below, was led to expect a general attack at the mouth of the Charles River, under the city. Throughout the 8th and 9th the weather was dark and rainy and the wind from the east, an unfavorable combination for a movement requiring the utmost precision. On the 10th the troops from the crowded ships were landed to dry their clothes and accoutrements. Wolfe and his brigadiers now finally surveyed that line of cliffs which Montcalm had declared a hundred men could hold against the whole British army. It was defended here and there by small posts. Below one of these, a mile and a half above the city, the traces of a zigzag path up the bush-covered precipice could be made out, though Wolfe could not see that even this was barricaded. Here, at the now famous Anse du Foulon, he decided to make his attempt.
The ships, however, kept drifting up and down between Cap Rouge and the city, with a view to maintaining the suspense of the French. Each morning Wolfe's general orders to the soldiers were to hold themselves in readiness for immediate action, with as full directions for their conduct as was compatible with the suppression of the spot at which they were to fight. On the night of the 11th the troops were reëmbarked, and instructions sent to Burton to post the Forty-eighth on the south shore opposite the Anse du Foulon. On the following day Wolfe published his last orders, and they contained a notable sentence: "A vigorous blow struck by the army at this juncture may determine the fate of Canada." Almost at the same moment his gallant opponent from his head-quarters at Beauport was writing to Bourlamaque at Montreal that he gave the enemy a month or less to stay, but that he himself had no rest night or day, and had not had his boots or clothes off for a fortnight. Another Frenchman was informing his friends that what they knew of that "impetuous, bold, and intrepid warrior, Monsieur Wolfe," gave them reason to suppose he would not leave them without another attack.
A suspicious calm brooded over the British squadron off Cap Rouge as Bougainville watched it from the shore throughout the whole of the 12th. The men were under orders to drop into their boats at nine, and were doubtless busy looking to their arms and accoutrements. By a preconcerted arrangement the day was spent after a very different fashion in the Basin of Quebec. Constant artillery fire and the continual movement of troops against various parts of the Beauport lines engaged the whole attention of Montcalm, who had, in fact, little notion what a number of men had gone up the river with Wolfe.
When night fell upon the ruined city and the flickering campfires of the long French lines, the tumult grew louder and the anxiety greater. The batteries of Point Lévis and the guns of Saunders' ships redoubled their efforts. Amid the roar of the fierce artillery, served with an activity not surpassed during the whole siege, Montcalm, booted and spurred, with his black charger saddled at the door, awaited some night attack. The horse would be wanted yet, but for a longer ride than his master anticipated, and, as it so turned out, for his last one. Up the river at Cap Rouge all was silence, a strange contrast to the din below. The night was fine, but dark, and was some three hours old when a single light gleamed of a sudden from the Sutherland's main-mast. It was the signal for sixteen hundred men to drop quietly into their boats. A long interval of silence and suspense then followed, till at two o'clock the tide began to ebb, when a second lantern glimmered from Wolfe's ship. The boats now pushed off and drifted quietly down in long procession under the deep shadow of the high northern shore.